More than "the devil made me do it" we're facing a serious problem in the coming years:

1) The court recognized and given a written sentence that stated there are innate violence traits in some north africans.2) Here in italy special laws are provided for the dog races known as "biters" (Bulldogs and the likes). Since the same can be now legally said for North Africans should we have special laws for them?3) If a "biter" harms a person the law prescribes the dog to be retired. Instead this offender got a pen

Personal responsibility is a pure fiction in a deterministic universe.Everything that will ever happen was decided at the time of the Big Bang.We just don't have the instruments to predict everything yet.

As our instruments get better, we will get better at understanding and predicting human behavior.It is already clear that we are all products of our genetics and our environment.

If we're smart, we'll realize that protecting society from dangerous people is more important than crying about who has what gene,

However, there is no more room for "personal responsibility" in a random universe.

A fair die has a 1/6 chance of producing each of its possible outcomes(a fair D6, that is). A loaded die might have a 100% chance of producing a 6 and no chance of any of the others. One of these is random, one is deterministic, neither is free.

Aside from the fact that it is intuitively powerful, it is actually pretty hard to figure out what it would mean for something to have "free will". Imagine a die that can "chose"

Personal responsibility is a pure fiction in a deterministic universe.
Everything that will ever happen was decided at the time of the Big Bang.
We just don't have the instruments to predict everything yet.

There's no counter proof to this assertion. For a simple example, we can create a quantum system that can, when observed, collapse into one of two states. But we can't predict which of those two states that the system will collapse into. Even if a human were completely deterministic, all they have to do is use one of these systems to inject unpredictable randomness into their decision making.

In other words, you don't need to predict the behavior of a human being, you need to predict the behavior of this

Personal responsibility is a pure fiction in a deterministic universe.

Good thing we don't live in one, then.

Everything that will ever happen was decided at the time of the Big Bang.We just don't have the instruments to predict everything yet.

Nope. It is impossible, even at the most basic theoretical level, to predict everything. Basic physics theory shows that it is impossible to even just measure everything to an arbitrary degree of precision regardless of what instrumentation you may have. Go back and read your Heisenberg.

Nope. It is impossible, even at the most basic theoretical level, to predict everything. Basic physics theory shows that it is impossible to even just measure everything to an arbitrary degree of precision regardless of what instrumentation you may have. Go back and read your Heisenberg.

Actually, while complete measurement may be impossible, it does not mean that the actual underlying mechanics are not deterministic. In fact, superdeterminism [wikipedia.org] is considered a viable explanation of Bell's inequality that avoids ruling out a completely deterministic universe by abandoning any notion of free will in performing an experiment.

I'm certain the judge has the gene for rectal-cranial insertion. There is a simple test for that defect, of course. Just read what a person writes. Is soon becomes obvious whether he has his head up his ass or not. In itself, the rectal-cranial insertion isn't a real problem, unless the victim has an exceedingly large skull, or an especially small orifice. The real problem, of course, is the resulting oxygen deprivation to the brain.

More likely. People can change - or perhaps no change is necessary if it was a crime of passion or accident. I wonder if those crimes are more common with genes such as this?

I would've leaned towards more time. A former alcoholic has to watch his beer intake, and possibly stay away from it altogether. An aggressive person has to keep his anger in check. This reduced sentence seems backwards to me. What's next - reduced sentences for hit and run cases and manslaughters, if the drunk driver has a gene that h

And before someone else points it out, yes I meant "keeping society safe from criminals". First cup of coffee, yadda yadda.

If this really is genetic, wouldn't that be an argument for the death penalty as a method of selecting against that gene? Seems to me that giving such a light sentence is counterproductive here, if in fact it is genetic.

I hold similar beliefs, and to me, the punitive aspects of prison should only be as required to a) be a deterrence, b) serve as a lesson (as in you have to feel punished so you understand what you did is bad) and c) symbolically represent atonement to society. the latter part is really necessary because then the criminal can feel they deserved their punishment and got better from it, but also have the society consider someone who has finished his sentence as a new person.

Unfortunately, too many people feel that legal punishment is a means to avenge the victim. This is cruel, wasteful and essentially inefficient. Demand punishments as light as possible to deter: this will empty prisons, be less costly, and make for a more balanced society.

Doesn't that make the punitive aspects of the prison system (which have not been demonstrated to serve any rehabilitative goal) unconscionable?

Well, he said "keep criminals safe from society". As part of that, keeping criminals safe from revenge should be included. The punitive aspects of prison discourage retribution, especially if the avenger would also be subject to the same punishments as the criminal. I would argue that this aspect is very successful even in relatively violent cultures like those in the US. The criminal "pays his dues" and hence, sates the victims' desire for vengeance.

Conscious awareness of our own free will is something we each experience. It's fundamental, as basic to all our observations as it gets, and in fact more fundamental than the existence of an objective physical universe. Every single experience you have ever had points to your existence as a consiousness. Only some of the experiences you have had point to an external common reality. Your emotions are experiences you have had, and point to you as the experiencer, but they don't prove ther

Yes. I hold both these beliefs. The justice system is not about blame, it's about keeping criminals safe from society and (in my mind) rehabilitating them.

The U.S. justice system is founded on the monastery model of repentance. See: Michael Foucault, "Discipline & Punish". The modern-day U.S. prison system is an industrial model that seeks taxpayer rent in exchange for effectively perpetual incarceration for anything that may be classified in the public's eyes as a crime. (See: Ann Krueger's paper on "rent seeking").

You would be very hard pressed to find anyone conscious of what the system is who would describe the prison system as something that in any way rehabilitates. In the criminal justice industry (lawyers, police, judges, etc.) often it's called "criminal college": where one learns the trade and networks. The prison system stigmatizes and ostracizes - it makes travel, finding a job, getting education all more difficult; it has no benefit for prisoners (in my opinion, and according to the three federal court judges I've asked this very question of). It also has questionable benefit or society - but that's a bigger question.

You would never blame a computer for a programmer's error, but you would try to fix the bugs, and if there was a dangerous bug you couldn't fix you wouldn't use that computer.

I agree. The prison system necessarily presumes culpability - i.e. that the criminal act was conducted of one's own free will. If it were otherwise the prison system would simply be segregation of those whose relationship with society is unacceptable because of factors they are unable to change - their genetics and/or environment, and our prison system would be analogous to apartheid.

You make some interesting points and I don't disagree with some of your conclusions, however it is important to keep in mind that "barbaric" is a pejorative referring to a lack of "civilized" influences. The very notion of civilization is that individuals must sacrifice certain behaviors in order to benefit from the synergies of group participation. People who cannot, for whatever reason, conform to a certain minimal extent must be ostracized, for the good of the group.

I don't necessarily disagree, but you might find it interesting to read about the Native American / First Nations systems of justice prior to European colonization. In particular, natives who committed "crimes" would be made to sit with victims in a tent with elders until the elders decided that there was appropriate empathy and repentance by the accused. In contrast, nowadays, the Elders often describe the youth who come out of modern prisons as "forever lost". While there have probably always been people

Agreed. Anyone who mounts a "my genes made me do it" defence should realize that their genes are, for now, immutable and so they are effectively claiming that they cannot be successfully rehabilitated and must be monitored or otherwise controlled for the rest of their lives.

This essentially reflects my belief. If a person has a genetic disposition to murder and acts on it, they shouldn't be "punished" for this, but may need to be isolated from society. Of course, if we can cure the physical ill (i.e. schizophrenia) then we should cure rather than isolate.

Is personal responsibility compatible with atheism? Before you break out the troll mods, I ask this in seriousness. If we are nothing more than a chemical being, then where does personal responsibility come into play?

How is this train of thought any different for a theist? "If God's creations, enacting his will, then where does personal responsibility come into play?"

But if you go down that 'lack of free will' route, then crime was predestined, this subsequent capture was predestined, the judge was predestined to set that particular sentence too, and everything about the whole world is basically pointless.

So it's best to assume free will exists for practical purposes. Save the metaphysics for those insomniac nights (or take a philosophy degree).

Maybe not. That's not just an atheistic question though - it goes right to the basis of free will.

However, we can accept for the sake of argument that we're all just clockwork beings with no more control of our destiny than a computer program. My programming is telling me that if I am going to continue to achieve my primary objectives (shorthanded as "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness"), then dangers to those primary objects (including violent criminals) must be neutralized. This guy's genes may be an excuse, and an explanation for his actions. However, that certainly doesn't make him any less dangerous.

The only way I'd want him to get less time on the basis of his "aggressive genes" is if he were to undergo a chemical or genetic treatment that reduces the effects of those genes.

When it really gets down to it, the question becomes irrelevant. At the end of the day, you have an individual that is a danger to the rest of society. Whether or not the murderer was 'responsible' for his actions is a debate for the philosophers -- we can only hope to do what we can to make sure that this person in question is unable to harm others again, either by keeping them away from society or rehabilitating them to the point where they will no longer pose a threat to society at large. In this respect

Criminal sentences are NOT about revenge. Or at least they aren't supposed to be in theory. They are about:
Rehabilitation - Attempting to train/teach the criminal the error in his thinking enabling him/her to avoid it in the future. Allowing him/her to return to be a productive member of society safely.
Deterrence - Sort of a preemptive rehabilitation, it is a punishment to deter criminals from doing it or from repeating it.
Separation - Often hard prison time is advocated over weekends or probation. Th

Is personal responsibility compatible with religion? If everything is controlled by an omnipotent, omniscient Being, then where does personal responsibility come into play? Everything happens according to God's plan. How do we blame a person for following Someone else's plan?

I think personal responsibility is a crutch that people lean on instead of facing up to the fact that our problems and questions have difficult and complicated solutions. It's far easier to put responsibility on individuals than it is to admit that there may be genetic or social infrastructures issues that encourage criminality in some people and discourage it in others. If we can say the criminal is solely at fault for his actions, then we never acknowledge our own responsibility for the problems that the

This is inconsistent with my experience of guilt (which, I would add, is very different from my experience of fear of retribution and punishment). To anyone who might get angry at me for asserting this, ask whether your anger at me is consistent with your belief that I had no control over typing it.

To protect us from those persons who cannot recognize the validity of this statement: "No man has a right to harm another. And that is all the government should restrain him." The government's job is to restrain these persons in cages, to protect our inalienable rights.

I never revealed my own opinion (and I'm not sure I really know it). I do know that if you got 100 people into a room, you couldn't get 80 of them to agree on the precise purpose of imprisonment.

Most people would agree it's some combination of rehabilitation, incapacitation/societal protection, deterrence/prevention, restoration, retribution, education and denunciation/condemnation - but you'd get raging arguments about the balance between them. Arguments, no doubt, in which someone would fall back on calli

Finding a consensus on the purpose of imprisonment is pretty much impossible.

Which is, in my opinion, the problem. If prison is about punishment; fine, take away the cable TV, education, and job training. If prison is about rehabilitation; fine, then prison should be like a combination full time thearapy and education system (and incidently, the same kinds of facilities should be open to non-criminals). If prison is about keeping dangerous people off the streets; fine, then sentences should be based off of scientifically valid recidivism rates combined with the dangerousness of t

No, it really isn't. In the US at least, the prison system is officially called the Department of Corrections (DoC), and prisons are also commonly referred to as correctional facilities.

Sure, and since we changed the War Department to the Department of Defense, we've only used our military in self-defense, right? Names are just names, and they don't necessarily reflect the true intentions of the times much less modern intentions years after a name essentially became a meaningless label for an institution that's grown beyond it.

Plus, "corrections" could easily refer to either rehabilitation or deterrence. Rehabilitation was a dominant theory in the 60's & 70's, but deterrence was the

If prison exists as a punishment, then he is less to blame for his actions, and therefore should have the shorter sentence.

If prison exists as an example to others, then this ruling doesn't even make any sense, as a person cannot change their gene structure.

If prison exists to keep the dangerous elements of society away from everyone else, then the whole idea of prison "terms" seems illogical to me. Everyone should go to prison until such time as they are evaluated to no longe

Prisons serve all three roles. Their existance is ment to be a deterrent to those that have not broken the law, punishment for those that have already broken the law, and protection of the rest of society from those who've demonstrated a willingness to break the law. The nature of the crime will effect to what extent the sentencing is intended to act as a punshment or protective role.

Sentencing of Blue and White colar criminals are going to be aimed at punishment and a warning to others that may be tempted to perpetrate similar acts (embezlement, breaking and entering, etc.). The ancillary effects of incarceration (loss of job, being ostrasized by friends/family, difficulty finding a job post incarceration) are as much part of the punishement as the actuall time spent in prison.

The sentencing of violent offenders is going to be targeted more at punishing the perpetrator and protecting the innocent. That's why they tend to have longer sentences and are locked up in higher security facilities than their blue collar compatriots. Rehabilitation is more important, but less successful with certain groups of violent criminals and thus they serve longer sentences and are occationally euthanized by the state (depending on where they are incarcerated).

The death penalty is the ultimate in both punishment of the criminal and protection of society, and IMO not to be used lightly. It should never be used for those that have not proven themselves to be violently dangerous to the rest of society (ie tax fraud doesn't deserve a needle, but repeated homocides does).

Honestly - do people refuse to accept responsibility for their actions, or lack of actions anymore?The purpose of jail isn't really to punish anyone, but rather to keep them off the playground until they can "play nice". If law is going to say that genes controll the way we behave, then will Italian courts start locking people up for having certain genes because they will tend to be violent?

I can understand that it doesn't seem right to punish someone for things out of their control, but part of the purpose of putting murderers in prison is to make it harder for them to kill more people (at least that's my impression). They could maybe put him in a nicer prison, but if anything having the gene implies he's more dangerous than most people, so there is more reason to keep him in prison longer- not less. Hopefully they can help him overcome his genetic aggression, but it makes no sense to put him

I can understand that it doesn't seem right to punish someone for things out of their control

I can't, because I can't understand the idea of "punishment" at all. I understand the idea of conditioning, and the notion that imposing a negative consequence on someone because they have violated some behavioural norm may in some cases reduce the rate of such violations.

But when people talk about "punishment" they seem to have something quite different in mind. In particular, people who talk about "punishment" o

So when someone says, "A murderer deserves life imprisonment" what they mean is "I would feel better if that person was put in prison for life." I don't really see why people's feelings should be the basis for the criminal law system.

After you get stabbed 12 times, I'm pretty sure your pain receptors will cause a feeling of not wanting that to happen again (At least to yourself, if not to anyone else)

When we have inherent individual faults of some kind, it would be better to have society expect us to strive to overcome them. A mens rea is a big part of crime, but the effects of this kind of biological difference threaten to make grey a matter that the law (and society) relies on being reasonably clear - whether people are to be judged responsible for their actions. If people are drugged through no fault of their own, are insane, or are in a situation where they have little other choice, we may be lenien

It's the smell of free will going out the window, courtesy of people thinking that gene==unable to overcome that impulse. And with free will out the window, there's no liability. And with no liability... well, the court system we have is completely unworkable.

I was wondering when that issue was going to crop up. Thankfully, Italy seems bound to test just how much of a disaster that road will be.

The only solution to this is to ignore genetic predisposition when judging a convicted criminal.

Or, to put it differently: we have no choice but to believe in free will. Our society depends on it.

Is making an empirically questionable premise, taken on faith, the foundation of your society really a good idea?

Beyond that, it isn't even the "only solution". Just as, today, our justice system is extremely interested in parsing out "intent"(premeditated vs. non-premeditated, accidental vs. negligent vs. willfully negligent, etc.) you could easily enough imagine a system based instead on parsing out behavioral disposition. We already take some classes of mitigating factors and aggravating factors into

No, you misunderstood. The problem isn't liberal depravity. The problem is that this approach removes intent, and replaces it with "genes did it". Yes, it's an exaggeration, and even the Italian judge didn't go all the way on this.

Here's the problem with this approach: it is possible to tie a genetic predisposition to pretty much anything these days. And from what I know about the cognitive sciences area, more and more genes are found to influence more and more behaviors. The end game here is that pretty mu

There are those who suggest that homosexuality isn't a choice, but a strong genetic predisposition. If one can choose not to be homosexual, they are at core the same as everyone else, and then gay marriage laws aren't discriminating against people, but behavior. Granted the behavior discriminated on is a silly and unnecessary distinction when judging marriages (homosexual couples have demonstrated they can raise children, have stable households, contribute positively to society), but it's no longer a civi

While I agree with the general idea behind your statement, it's not as clear as just overcoming impulses. If it were, you could just tell people with clinical depression to "just cheer up!" or schizophrenics "just stop listening to those voices in your head!" Or, as a particularly horrible example, people with Tay-Sachs disease [wikipedia.org] who have been known to beg to be tied back up so they will stop chewing off their own fingers, and go back to just chewing off their own lips. They are absolutely unable to contro

Given punishments for crimes where judgment is impaired, this makes sense. I don't know that I can agree though. For example, if your are driving drunk in a car and kill someone, that carries a different sentence than being sober and killing someone, in or out of the car. Circumstances dictate different sentences, which they should. In theory, genetic dispositions are not something you can control so could actually require more consideration than drinking. I do think personal judgment should override t

As often as we try to "cut the heads off of people" by separating the mind/brain from the rest of the body, we really can't. They are inseparable. We have an abundance of evidence that shows, for example, that homosexuality is not the "choice" that many assert it is and occurs among animals other than humans as well. Some people are quite naturally more aggressive than others and that, in fact, it can be modified through various chemical means.

Society has been on a tear lately always looking to avoid personal responsibility and blame someone (or in this case, something else). For example,

--Kids aren't hyperactive or have too much energy. They have ADD and require Ritalin.--Why isn't my kid cut out to do Algebra in 2nd grade? It's not that he/she might have a disposition for the arts, but that I need to blame the school and the teachers.--"The Man" is holding me down. I find it odd that at my Fortune 500 company the "White male" is not the majority of VPs.--I'm not fat, it's just that I have a genetic disposition to eat tons of crappy food and avoid exercise. My genes make me buy ice cream and not even take a 10minute walk around the neighborhood every day.--I can't get a date b/c I have a genetic disposition to be single, and not because I want to date Hawaiian Tropic models and I look like Bill Gates and dress like a slob.

Damnit people, take a bit of responsibility, there's millions of cases out there of people finding their niche and succeeding or overcoming their obstacles to obtain greatness. I don't recall all the immigrants that came through Ellis Island in the early 1900s saying, "I can't be anything" and blamed everyone else.

There used to be an expression, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." I think to many people this now has become, "When the going gets tough, blame someone else."

Shouldn't someone with "aggression genes" get a longer sentence, to protect others from his aggressive behavior? Since when has "being an asshole" constituted extenuating circumstances? Oh, that's right -- if you are genetically an asshole, then that's ok! So, all I have to do is prove in court that my father and my grandfather where assholes too, and I can get away with murder? That shouldn't be too hard...

That he got only 9 years for murder? That will rehabilitate him? People have gotten longer sentences for stealing cars. I suggest when the guy is released from prison, he be given residence next to the judges house.

It seems to be working, Italy has an annual murder rate of 1.05 per 100,000 people. The US, with it's much longer sentences and the death penalty still used on occasion is up at 5.8 per 100,000.
Correlation != causation, blah blah blah, but liberal western Europe has consistently low crime rates. Of course, if you look at the list, the real correlation behind crime is poverty. Western Europe, the various Oil rich nations and other countries with strong welfare system have lower crime. The countries where government support for the poor is slim to non-existent, or those where the government is essentially non-existent have high crime rates.

Furthermore, people don't steal because they are poor. They steal because they are sociopaths. Bernie Madoff was not short of cash for a box of donuts and a six-pack. He was not poor or downtrodden or starvin

You've got to remember this is Europe, where they don't believe in punishing people. 9 years for murder is a harsh sentence in most European countries. And then they actually reduce a sentence because the guy is violent; shit, any logically thinking person would use this as a reason to increase it. I'd hate to think what their crime rates will look like 30 years from now.

Italy had 1.29 murders per 100,000 people in 2000. We had 4.28 per 100,000 people. (link [nationmaster.com])

I guess those harsh prison sentences are going wonders for stopping murder here. Gosh, you'd think that with only 9% of the world population and 22% of the world's prison population that American society would be safe, right?